Drinking vessels are decorated for a wide variety of purposes. Decorative and commemorative mugs, cups and glasses that occupy large portions of souvenir shops are just some of the examples of such drinking vessels. Typically, the vessel body itself is decorated. There are several known methods for decorating ceramic and glass vessel bodies. Examples include direct screening, water-slide decal transfer, heat-release decal transfer, and dye sublimation methods.
If a vessel has a handle, the handle is typically an integral part of the vessel. For example, a ceramic coffee mug typically has a ceramic handle that was a part of the same clay body as, and fired together with, the mug body. There are also examples of handles that are attached to a vessel body by other devices, such as one or more flexible metal bands or a metal sleeve over the vessel body.
Conventional methods of decorating drinking vessels typically involve permanent or irreversible modifications to the vessels and require specialized equipment and manufacturing expertise to accomplish. Given the large variety of decorative vessels that are typically needed, a manufacturer or vendor of such vessels often must keep a far larger number of vessels than is likely to be sold in a short period. In addition, decorative possibilities are limited when decorating the mug body is the only option.
Thus there is thus a need for a more flexible and economical way to supply decorative drinking vessels and for more options for decorating drinking vessel. The invention disclosed herein is aimed at providing a drinking vessel with substantially fewer drawbacks of the conventional approaches.